Week One

View from the balcony in my office

Lessons learned from my first week working in a German office. It's not scientific, but in 5 days I have garnered it is acceptable to:

1) Wear jeans all week long.

2) Arrive around 9:30/10am.

2) Dip out of work a little early to watch a big soccer match.

3) Take lots and lots of breaks if you are a smoker. They may end up with shorter lives in the end, but they're making the time they've got count.

4) Leave when you feel you hit your limit for the day (within reason of course- I'm not talking 3pm here- unless it's a Friday). "What are you going to do instead, sit there and pretend to work?" scoffed one coworker. Um yes, that's exactly what we Americans do.

5) Leave in the early afternoon on a Friday.  Freitag ab eins, macht jeder seins goes the saying. Translation: Starting at 1pm on Friday everyone does their own thing.

6) Take 25 vacation days a year. HA. I just threw that one in to piss you off. 

I guess I've made it all sound pretty great. So here are some downsides to even things out a bit:

1) If you don't go to the Finance Bureau and sort out your tax class you are automatically placed in Class 6 where they deduct, oh, approximately 80% of your salary. I'm all for social welfare but 50% seems like plenty, thankyouverymuch.

2) The whole welcoming someone new to the office with a happy hour, lunch, cupcakes, or uh, email to tell them how they're going to get into the building their first day is apparently not protocol.

3) You have to type on a German keyboard with US settings for a week. But that's likely just in my case. Hyphens, colons, and quotation marks, where are youuu? Umlauts go awayyy.